New Years with the Nowlands

Grammy and Papa came to visit us late Christmas night! (Technically early on the 26th, but whatever). We were excited to have them come since it was their first visit together! They are so busy and it's so far, we don't get to see them nearly enough. We had a wonderful week with Jeremy home in between Christmas and New Years and did a lot of fun things.

The first day they were here was very warm. I think there was a storm rolling in, hence the dark clouds, but it was actually quite pleasant outside.

Also one of the days George and Jeremy took the boys to a fossil dig place. They brought home lots of rocks!

 Then Grammy and the girls and I met them at the Cincinnati Zoo! We'd been wanting to see their light display but never made it before Christmas, so luckily it went on through New Years. It was fun to see!

We also ate very well all week! This was one of the nights when I made Shrimp Pad Thai. Yum!

 The kids love to have Papa tell stories. He is a good story-teller! 

 And here's a chubby baby just because she's adorable.

 We also went to the Nature Center one day. We had a great time watching the birds. Jeremy's parents are so great about slowing down and creating learning experiences and really enjoying things. We've been to the nature center lots of times and never bothered to explore the Visitors Center or look out at the bird feeders. They got us some bird books and the kids have a bird pamphlet they can check off when they see new birds. It's been lots of fun!

 New Years Eve was a fun culinary celebration as well. Grammy went to Jungle Jim's and got some gluten-free tempura mix and made us some delicious tempura! We had a feast! I also made a few other snackies we didn't really need, but we ate them the following days.

 Grace approved!

 Then we watched the London fireworks at 7pm with the kids. That works for us! We actually did end up staying up until midnight but didn't notice because we were hard at work on a puzzle. (And I have no idea why Anna is wearing shorts. We do not live in Florida).

Oh, and George had a great idea of having a Graeter's sampling party! Yes, please! We try to convert everyone to our favorite Cincinnati ice cream!

I'm realizing now how pathetic it is that we have more pictures of food than people...I'm going to blame Jeremy since he took most of these pictures...hehe. Yummy tamales.

 After New Years, they left to go do some research and family history, and when they came back, they told us they had discovered some ancestors that lived in our very town! In fact, they think they may have even owned the land our house is built on. Isn't that wild?!? They were a prominent family back when Milford first became a city and owned land down in what is now "old town" or "downtown" Milford. They found his gravestone in a cemetery just a few minutes from our house.

He was also friends with the Mr. Pattison, whom the boys' school is named after. Pretty neat stuff!